Matt Moran stages a wild, murderous plot with a new single. “Oh Brother,” wrought with acoustic guitar, sees the singer-songwriter regaling a tale about a brother who “stabbed a man with his knife, cut him deep and clean” down in New Orleans. Moran’s voice exacts the emotion like a two-ton anvil, crushing blow upon blow on the eardrums.

“There’s fences you can’t mend / He was one of those / This was one of them,” he warbles. “Like a moth to a flame / he’d always find a way, get himself all tethered up in things that can’t contain.”

The brother, it seems, is a dangerous man, one untamed and unable to slow it down for even a moment. “Brother, oh, brother, what have you done?” asks Moran. His question lingers in the brain, as though within the answer, floating somewhere in space, is the truth of all of life. “For the fans of my album ‘Black Sheep,’ this is for you,” Moran shared on Twitter/X. His post references the tightly-wound, 10-track Black Sheep, released back in 2020.

Listen to “Oh Brother” below.

Moran readies a brand new EP, called Oklahoma Vernacular, due this Friday (October 20). It follows 2022’s Heartache Kid and an accompanying acoustic set, released earlier this year.